Page 12 of Cinderella and the Outback Billionaire

‘The ridge,’ he murmured. ‘You’ll get a phone signal from up there.’

‘Maybe.’ The dust might make it impossible. ‘But the track’s a mess. I passed it on the way here. Thought about going up and decided not to. But I will get up it if need be,’ she amended hastily. ‘I’ve done it before.’

‘Have you now?’ No way was she a stranger to this land. ‘Take me with you.’

‘Hell no. You think I’m going to jolt that head of yours around any more than I have to? What if your eyes are hanging by a thread and the drive up the ridge breaks that thread? You’ll never see again.’

He hated that she might be right. ‘When will you go?’

‘Not tonight. You aren’t the only one who can’t see two metres in front of them at the moment.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’ll leave at dawn. The dust should have settled a bit by then.’

‘Don’t leave without telling me.’

‘I won’t.’

She settled into what might have been a companionable silence if Reid hadn’t been so hell-bent on filling up his lack of sight with other sensory input. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts and the pain in his body that threatened to make him weep. ‘Talk to me.’

‘About what?’

‘What’s your favourite memory?’

‘Why should I give it to you?’

‘Because talking about it makes you happy?’ He couldn’t get to know her without her co-operation and it occurred to him that he really did want to get to know her. She was brave and resourceful. She didn’t seem to have an agenda beyond keeping him alive and going for help as soon as possible. She was funny and sensible and unusual and...wonderful to listen to, and maybe it was just because they were under duress that he thought that way and maybe it wasn’t. ‘C’mon, work with me here. Tell me about the best day you’ve ever had.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather I read the textbook to you? We’re up to plants beginning with the letter T.’

‘Spare me.’

‘You first, then.’ She moved around and did whatever it was she was doing—taking the blanket she’d had around him away so he could get rid of some body heat, he surmised. But her body stayed in contact with his and he was grateful he didn’t have to ask for her touch again. She’d twigged that being without her touch made him panic. ‘What’s your favourite memory?’

‘Watching my brother walk out those prison gates and smile when he saw me.’

‘He didn’t know you’d be there to collect him?’

‘I told him I’d be there. I just don’t think he believed it. We got half an hour down the road before I pulled into a service station that had a diner attached to it. I wanted breakfast and asked him what he was having and he just stared at the menu as if he was lost. My big badass brother needed my help with something and I was over the moon about it. I wanted him to like me so bad. He was my hero.’

‘Your brother who killed a man was your hero?’

‘Exceptional circumstances.’ Reid heard his own voice hardening in warning not to press this line of questioning. ‘He had to.’ No point sharing that Reid was in two minds about whether his brother had pulled that trigger at all. Reid thought Bridie’s father might have been the one with the gun in his hand and that Reid had taken the fall so that then sixteen-year-old Bridie wouldn’t be left alone in the world. Not that Judah had ever confirmed this. ‘He’s still my hero—even after all these years.’

‘Loyal.’ She patted his shoulder as if to reassure him. ‘I like that.’

‘Why do you keep patting that shoulder?’ Why not his chest or his arm or take his hand as she had before.

‘It’s the only piece of you that isn’t bloody, bruised or banged up.’

‘That bad?’

‘Not good. Keep going with your best day ever. What food did you order in the diner?’

‘So, I ended up ordering for both of us, yeah? I was eighteen, fresh out of boarding school and my father had just died and my mother had passed not long before that. I’d been alone on Jeddah station, running it, trying to make sure my brother had somewhere to come home to, and the only people I’d been around for months were Tom Starr from the cattle station next door, and his daughter Bridie, and Gert—the housekeeper who came in three days every fortnight.’

‘I heard that story, yeah. You did a good job.’

‘I didn’t want to fail my brother. I badly wanted to prove to everyone I could do it.’

‘I know that feeling.’

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